Hard Rock & Heavy Metal News

Tag Archives: Maynard James Keenan

During Tool’s set at the Northern Invasion festival in Somerset, WI over the weekend, Maynard James Keenan jokingly begged his bandmates to finish their parts on their new album. The frontman, who was wearing his riot gear, said the following:

“A lot of people recently have been asking me, Maynard James Keenan, what’s with the fucking riot gear? Well, I’ll tell you. I’m afraid of bananas, and other forms of fruit, because eventually you wonderful people are going to run out of fucking patience. So I beg you – Danny, Adam, and Justin, please finish your parts so I can finish mine and take this fucking riot gear off.”

So far, drum tracking is done, but the group are taking a break for some shows and music clinics.

Metallica’s Lars Ulrich recently interviewed Maynard James Keenan (Tool, A Perfect Circle, Puscifer) for his Beats 1 show “It’s Electric!.” You can check out the full chat below, along with some excerpts [transcribed by Blabbermouth]:

Keenan on the long lengths of time between new A Perfect Circle and Tool albums:

“There’s a lot of timing issues with TOOL getting to the studio, I always try to gauge where they’re at, how things are going, and if I see a window where, ‘Okay, doesn’t seem like things are going to get done any time soon…’ The window might expand based on me going ‘I’m gonna go do something then.’ That’s why you had a lot of PUSCIFER for many years.

“I felt like if I was to go back and I do another PUSCIFER record, someone was gonna sneak into my bedroom and slit my throat, so I figured I’d go and call Billy [Howerdel, A PERFECT CIRCLE guitarist] and see where he’s at with music.”

Keenan on staying creative without chasing trends or consciously trying to appeal to the youth:

“Just be okay with not being part of the future, if you can get your head around the fact that you’re not going to be part of the next generation’s focus.”

“It gets easier to get lazy, so the only way to really do that is to always try to figure out some way to take yourself outside of your comfort zone. If you can get outside your comfort zone, you can then tap into things that are in a way fresh. I guess you could chalk it up to staying relevant. At our age now, you see a lot of artists coming out of the woodwork trying to clearly desperately trying to remain relevant, that stinks. That’s just stenchy.”

The first part of the “It’s Electric!” episode featuring Keenan will officially be released on April 22, while the second part will officially be released on April 29.

It looks like Maynard James Keenan is working on new Puscifer material. The news was confirmed in the below Instagram post. As previously reported, Keenan is also nearly done writing lyrics for Tool’s new album, and is also getting ready for the April 20 release of A Perfect Circle’s new album “Eat The Elephant”.

Maynard James Keenan has confirmed that he has been writing new Tool lyrics, and that he is actually almost done. He tweeted the following:

Started getting music files from the boys w the word FINAL in the title a few months ago after 11 years of begging. That in theory means the tracks wont change out from under me while I’m trying to write stories and melodies to them. In theory. Still waiting for the FINAL on 1,

While responding to a fan on Twitter, Maynard James Keenan said Tool’s new album will not be released this summer. Despite this, Danny Carey keeps saying it will be out this year, and Adam Jones recently said the music was already done and that the lyrics were being written, so there is still hope that it may be out before the end of 2018.

Tool’s Maynard James Keenan recently appeared on Joe Rogan’s “The Joe Rogan Experience” and discussed the band’s writing process, as well as their new album delay. You can watch the full interview, and read some excerpts below:

Keenan on his bandmates’ process:

“Their writing process is so drawn out. And I’m sure there’s a lot of reasons why the delay has been long. Their process is very analytical, and I think, at some point, maybe because so much time has gone by from the last album, there has to be a little bit of fear in here. [You think to yourself] ‘Is this record gonna be as good as the last one?’ The anticipation now is… Now the pressure is huge, so I’m sure there’s some of that [that] goes into play.”

“As far as the way that Danny and Justin and Adam write, it’s a very tedious, long process. And they’re always going back over things and questioning what they did and stepping back and going back farther and going forward and, in a way, they’re laying a foundation, they’re putting in the footings for a house. So I can’t write melodies until the footings are in place. I can’t write words until the melodies are in place.

I can’t build walls and then start decorating this place until the foundation is in place. ‘Cause if they keep changing the foundation, changing the footings, the melodies change, and then the story, of course, isn’t getting written. So that’s where we are. There’s a lot of footings that keep shifting — lots of awesome footings, but they keep changing. And they keep changing their minds. So I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing; it’s just their process.”

He also added:

“When you have a lot of very strong-willed, stubborn, opinionated people that have had success—myself included—when you give somebody some success, they’re pretty convinced they’re right. So it’s hard to talk to me, or it’s hard to talk to them, it’s hard to talk to people that are in that position, because they’ve been successful and so you think that the reason you got there is because of whatever position it is you’re taking today. Which is fine. But our process has evolved over the years, and that stubborn nature, you try [to] take a step back and not take any of these things personally.”

“My desire to move forward—go, go, go—and get things done… I’m always butting heads with the guys in Tool to get those things done, and it’s just not their process. It took a while for me to go, ‘This is not personal. This is just the way that they have to do it, and I have to respect it, and I have to take my time and let them take their time.’ And I just check in. I come and see what’s going on.

‘Hey, Justin, send me the track, see where we’re at. Is this thing done?’ If this thing is done-done-done and I can start writing words and music on it, great. But I’ve had instances where I’ve started to write stuff, and by the time I actually got it around and back and we were actually listening and whatever, the song had gone in a completely different direction, so everything that was written, melody-wise or lyric-wise, was completely irrelevant now, and I have to start over…”

He went on to say that him living in Arizona does not factor into the delay:

“I mean, I can sit there in that room and be with them in that room, but their process is so tedious and so ‘Rain Man’ that I just can’t… I just start fucking folding in on myself. But it’s a great thing. What they’re doing is a wonderful… I completely back what they’re doing. There’s no other way for them to do it. For me, I can move much more quickly if you let me help you.

But I think this is what they need to do, and I’m okay with it. You’ve gotta get a little friction in there, so I had to come in and puff my chest out a little bit and be aggressive and, ‘Let’s move it, guys. Let’s move it.’ And that works for a minute, and we definitely make traction. But if I were to do that every day, it would just become a part of the friction—more friction rather than actually getting anything done.”

It looks like Maynard James Keenan is officially working on the vocals for some new Tool songs. The following was posted on the band’s website:

“In speaking with Danny last night, he told me that the band has temporarily MOVED some of their gear into a larger space (across town) where MAYNARD is working on VOCALS for some of the new Tool material. I’m sure that he has already been doing this to some extent, but now he has more room to breathe and a better vocal booth.”

Adam Jones also recently posted a video, which seems to confirm that further progress is being made: